Chickens Part Three
The 2024 Flock
This year I wanted more Polishes as we were down to just four Polishes: Phylli Dilli, War Chief, Bippity and Boppity. We also like the idea of having some Olive eggers. We bought four each of gold laced Polishes, silver laced Polishes and Olive eggers. The Olive eggers were guaranteed hens, the Polishes were straight run. The 40 birds we bought in 2023 were kept in a pen in the garage until they were big enough to hang out with the older birds. For this batch of birds, I built a brooder out of some scrap wood and hardware cloth.
We lost one of the silver laced Polishes, two of the gold Polishes and two of the Olive eggers to Marty. We thought they were secure in the little pen we setup out in the yard for them, but Marty found a week spot and crawled right in to give chase. We ended up with three roosters, the two remaining gold laced Polishes and one of the silver laced Polishes. They have been named Chit (Chief in training), Chief Junior, and Cruella Deville. We have not yet named the four hens.
As I mentioned in a previous post we rehomed the turkeys. The guineas had to be rehomed along with a pair of splash Polishes as the rooster was getting picked on. We currently have twenty-nine chickens, five of them being roosters. The newest chickens aren’t old enough to lay yet but the others collectively lay 18 eggs a day. They slow down a bit in the cooler months, but we usually have a good number of eggs in the kitchen.
Plans for the flock are to let Abby and Elliot pick a breed of chickens that do well at poultry shows. We are hoping this will alleviate some of the arguing about taking care of the birds (probably not but we can hope). We are also hoping we can house these birds with our main flock, and maybe only separate them when it comes closer to county fair time. We are still a bit new to showing animals at fairs and are in the learning process.
The Turkeys & Guineas
The Turkeys
We hadn’t planned on the turkeys but when we went to get the Cochins, they had turkey poults too, so I said why not let’s try it. We loved the turkeys! They are very interesting birds, and they will answer your gobble every time! Four of them were taken out by Marty when they were still little. Drew wanted to name them Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Smoked but the kids wouldn’t go for it. Really only ended up naming one of them and its name was Cookie. Although Abby called the other two Dramatic and Over-Dramatic. We were never sure which were male or female, but Cookie was the most dominate of the bunch. We kept the turkeys for about a year before they became too much to deal with. Mainly they were bored with our quarter acre and my kids were easy targets. We gave them to a friend of mine who had a lot more space for them to roam.
The Guineas
Guineas are great birds to have, they were good guard dogs and kept the insect numbers down. I loved the guineas! Another ridiculous looking bird that is completely adorable to me and they are LOUD. We started with eight and lost the first one as a chick to pasty butt. The remaining seven lasted quite awhile but Marty eventually killed three of them. The guineas were difficult to contain in our yard. They were always getting on our roof and the neighbors’ roofs and getting in everyone’s trees. Between being in everyone else’s yard, they were too loud to stay in a town setting. We had to finally admit defeat and re-home the last four to a work friend who had acreage for them to roam.
In conclusion, we will stick to the more domestic birds, chickens, for as long as we live in town. We hope to one day have more land, and you can be sure I will be getting more guineas and turkeys…and maybe some peafowl (haha, don’t tell Drew).
